The King's Gambit(8)

“Now,” I began, “the matter touching which the Senate has sent me here to make inquiry about.” I stopped abruptly and repeated the sentence mentally, to see whether it made any sense.

“I won’t hear of it,” Sergius protested. “I would be a poor host were I not to offer you a bath. After all, your business is detaining you from attending the public baths. It happens that I have a modest bath right here in the house. Would you care to join me?”

Nothing loath, I followed him to the rear of the house. A pair of sturdy slaves flanked each of us to prevent accidents. They seemed well-drilled in the art of getting master and guests from table to bath without unpleasantness. Bath attendants divested us of our clothing at the entrance of the bath. Predictably, Paulus’s “modest bath” proved as much of an understatement as his “bite of lunch.” Private baths were still rare in those days, but since they are now common I will not bore you with an account of its size and appointments, except to note that the bath attendants were all young Egyptian girls. Sergius was making up for his years as a slave in great style.

“Now, my friend Sergius Paulus,” I said as we relaxed in the hot pool after a brief plunge in the cold one, “I really must get down to business. Serious business. Murder, sir, and arson, and a partner of yours who happens to be newly dead.” Suddenly, one of the Egyptian girls was beside me in the water, naked as a fish and handing me a goblet of wine that gleamed with droplets of condensation. Sergius was flanked by two such, and I refrained from speculating about what their hands were doing under the water. I took a drink and forged ahead.

“Sergius, what have been your dealings with the man called Paramedes of Antioch?”

“On a personal level, almost none at all.” Sergius leaned back and put his arms around the wet shoulders of his two attendants. Their hands were still beneath the water and he wore a blissful expression. “On a business level, he was just a foreigner who needed a city patron. He wanted to buy a warehouse to store his imports; oil and wine, I believe it was. I have a number of such foreign clients in the city. They pay me a percentage of their annual earnings. I don’t believe I ever saw the man except on the day he came to me and we went before the Praetor Peregrinus to legalize the arrangement. That must have been about two years ago. Pity the fellow’s dead, but Rome is a dangerous city, you know.”

“I know better than most.” One of the fetching little Egyptians took my half-empty cup and gave me a full one. I certainly couldn’t fault the service.

“This business about arson at the warehouse, though, that does disturb me, even though my quasi-ownership is purely a legal formality. Nasty business, arson. I hope you’re able to apprehend the felon responsible and give him to the beasts in the amphitheater.”

“Responsible for the arson, or for the murder?” I asked.

"Both. I should think the two were connected, shouldn’t you?”

He was a shrewd man, and I obviously wasn’t going to trick him with leading questions. We left the hot bath and the attendants oiled us, then scraped us clean with strigils, then back into the hot bath for a while, then to the massage tables. No wispy Egyptians at the tables, though. Instead, the masseurs were great strapping blacks with hands that could crush bricks.

“Do you know,” I asked Sergius when I had breath again after the Nubian pounding, “whether Paramedes had an arrangement of hospitium with any Roman citizen?”

Paulus seemed to think for a while. “Not that I recall,” he said at length. “If he’d had one, that family will be claiming the body for burial, as is customary. But then, if he had a hospes in the city, he wouldn’t have needed to come to me for patronage, would he?” It was a good point. Another possible lead eliminated, then.

Sergius saw me to the door, with an arm across my shoulders. “Decius Caecilius, I am most happy that you have paid me this visit, even under such distressing circumstances. You must most certainly come visit me again, just for the pleasure of your company. I entertain often, and if I send you an invitation, I hope you will be good enough to attend.”

“I should be more than honored, Sergius,” I answered sincerely. Besides, my financial condition was such in those days that I could not afford to pass up such a meal as Sergius would undoubtedly provide.

“Although this was an official visit, it has become much more a social one, so allow me to bestow this parting guestgift.” He handed me something heavy discreetly wrapped in linen and I thanked him courteously as I stepped out onto the street.